Featured business person: Dinesh Nagabhushan

Nagabhushan’s new job is a big change from his previous career in software. But sales shouldn’t be a problem for the outgoing native of India, who definitely doesn’t fit the cliche of the introverted computer nerd.

“I like to do all kind of things,” said Nagabhushan, who lists cricket, cooking and home remodeling among his hobbies. “I even help a friend DJ, even though I don’t know much about it.”

Nagabhushan, 38, grew up in a small town near Bangalore, earned his undergraduate degree in India and came to the United States in 1997 to study for his master’s degree at Wichita State University.

He never got that degree, though, deciding he liked working in information technology better than studying it. He worked for Integrated Solutions Group in Wichita for a couple of years, then moved to the San Francisco area and worked for several customer relations management firms.

“I did a range of projects, from building applications from the ground up to managing applications to having teams in different parts of the world,” he said. “There was a part of my life when I used to go back and forth from India to Germany to the United States so much that I would be out of the country two or three weeks every month.”

Nagabhushan said he and his wife, Lisa, a certified public accountant whose family is from Wichita, decided to move back to Kansas to continue raising their two daughters — Anjali, 8, and Ishani, 6.

He started with the insurance company earlier this summer and says he will focus mainly, but not exclusively, on selling to the south Asian community.

“It is a huge change,” he said of his career move. “The whole reason is I want to educate as many people as possible about these things. We buy insurance on our house, on our cars, but we don’t buy insurance on ourselves. And the odds of us dying are 100 percent.”